Supernova
by silenceia
Summary: Maggie Stark is born soft and pink, but it really only hides the burning inferno of a star that resides within. fem!Tony On hiatus until I've seen Captain Marvel and how it affects the plot.
1. Chapter 1

**Chapter 1**

Margaret Maria Stark is born and she's soft pink flesh and gurgling noises that quickly turn into wails for attention. Her world consists of blurry shapes and either comfort or discomfort. Comfort is good, comfort is warm soft blankets wrapped around her, a filled belly, sweet songs sung to her while being held against a warm chest, a gravelly voice telling her things that make her head fill with _knowledge_ and brighten her world. Discomfort is bad. Discomfort is cold, is hunger, is silence or sharp words like 'No' and 'bad girl'.

Maggie learns. There are two big shapes that move and make discomfort go away when she gives a sign. Small signs are often ignored so she has to be loud. She learns that the big one with the rumbling voice laughs when she grabs his fingers. The other one coos a lot, likes picking her up and walking around. If Maggie makes the right noises, the cooing one will get to see new blurry shapes.

As time passes, her eyesight grows sharper and her head begins to fill with words. A new big moving shape enters her world, called a 'nanny'. With the appearance of the nanny, the first two, now known to her as Mama and Daddy, all but exit her life.

Maggie does not like the nanny. Nanny tuts when Maggie yells, she chastises when she plays with her food, and she takes away the screws and bolts she enjoys pushing around and examining. Instead Nanny gives her dolls with dresses and shouts when Maggie takes them apart to see how they are held together.

From then on, she's only allowed to play with Nanny in the room, and the dolls get taken away when she leaves. She has to play the way Nanny likes it. Pretending that the dolls do stuff, that they talk, that they get married (but only the girl dolls to the boy dolls! No girls marrying girls!) and have parties.

Except they _don't_. They're just squishy plastic, they don't move, they don't talk, they are _dumb_ and Maggie hates them and Nanny. She wants her to go away.

Maggie is smart and remembers how Nanny screamed when she saw the doll parts scattered around the nursery. Nanny didn't like that at all, especially when she stepped on a head. Nanny doesn't like a lot of the things Maggie does, and when Maggie does enough of those things, Nanny puts her in bed earlier without making her play much longer. Her 'theory' - a word Daddy had used once at dinner - is that if Maggie tries hard enough, she can make Nanny go away completely.

So she does. She rips apart the dolls in front of her, bites off the heads, she screams when Nanny touches her, she throws food at her, spits at her. She's a terror and Nanny doesn't last long.

Mama comes back and is disappointed, chastising her for being mean and a bad girl. Good girls don't do mean things. Good girls don't destroy dolls.

Another nanny takes the place of the old one. This one is nicer, she smells good and she shows Maggie picture books. "Look, this is a horse," she says, pointing at a picture. Maggie repeats the word carefully, and New Nanny is delighted and praises her. Then she goes to the next picture. "This is a dog."

New Nanny is nice but she's utterly boring, and Maggie wants Mama and Daddy, so she makes New Nanny go away. Next Nanny is an old biddy and all sharp tongue and strict rules. She thinks Maggie is too fat and needs to eat less.

But Maggie isn't soft pink anymore, she's tantrums and deviousness and learning, and where being a terror had worked on the last two, she realises very quickly that this Nanny will outlast her prior strategies. So Maggie does the opposite. She goes silent, whiny, sniffling sadly instead of talking and not looking anyone in the face. It's hard because being silent means not getting what she wants, but it's worth it in the end. Mama makes Mean Nanny go away when Maggie stops eating for two days 'because Nanny said she's too fat'.

Nannies come and go. Some are nicer, some last longer, some are terrible. None stay. Even if Maggie likes some of them, they soon grow boring. Maggie prefers the company of Mr. Jarvis, who doesn't talk to her as if she's stupid and who knows _the best_ stories ever. Mr. Jarvis watches movies with her, brings her cookies, tucks her in at night.

Then one nanny comes who is as boring as the one with the picture books, but the picture books _she_ brings have 'words' next to the pictures.

Learning to read takes Maggie two hours, and that's only because this Nanny is slow in turning the pages and so much more interested in looking at the pictures instead of the words.

Boredom is no issue from then on, because there are a lot of books in the mansion, and Maggie wants to read them _all_.

When she tells Mama "I can read!" at twenty months of age, she gets her first 'tutor' and her childhood is effectively over.

―~~―~~―

Maggie is four and in front of her is a completed circuit board. Her hands smart from putting it together with her little fingers, but it is done and she is so _proud_. She created something _adult_. Something that most adults don't even _understand_.

Dad even nods approvingly, and shows it to the guests at the dinner party that evening. They gasp and titter, 'oh aren't you a smart little thing', 'your daughter takes after you, Howard!' and 'smart _and_ pretty' is what they say. Where Mom and Dad pretend not to hear and Maggie listening in goes unnoticed, they hiss other things, about how she's a girl doing boy things and how _odd_ it is.

Maggie doesn't care about that. Neither does Dad.

Mom does.

"I'm not saying that building things is bad!" she insists. "But you need to be a girl at the same time!"

Maggie _is_ a girl. She's a girl and she loves creating things that are useful and she dreams of creating things that are dangerous. And apparently, those activities are reserved for men, but Mom isn't going to forbid it because Dad approves, so Maggie just has to be _more_ of a girl, and sell the engineering as a hobby. "These things matter," Mom says firmly.

Being more of a girl entails frilly dresses and cute, uncomfortable shoes. No running. Smile with less teeth. No loud laughs, make it soft and bell-like, giggle instead of snorting. No _rambling_ for God's sake, and _especially_ not about science. No too-long sentences. Always be polite. No wild gesturing, hold your head head high, you're a Stark. No, that's not how you walk, take small steps. If you ever sit like that in public there will be consequences, dear.

Maggie endures the etiquette lessons for exactly one day and only because her mother is giving them personally, and it means Mom is there and talking and paying attention to her. On the second day Maggie throws a tantrum of heretofore unseen proportions. She's not going to be some empty _doll_! She's Maggie Stark and-

"Then, Margaret, I suppose we will be closing down your workshop and take away your silly science books and the computer," Mom says calmly.

And the thing is, Maggie can't _live_ without those things. Her hands are restless, they need to move, to do, to build, to _create_. Her mind is a wretched hungry monster, always demanding more more _more_ , feeding it knowledge satisfies it at the same time as it makes it _worse_. She exists at a different velocity from everybody else, too fast for anyone to keep up with. She doesn't have tutors anymore. Learning by herself is much more efficient. Waiting for teachers to sound out words when she can understand a concept just from looking at a single formula just takes _too long._

Take it away and she won't know how to _breathe_.

So she falls silent, gives in, and hates herself for it.

―~~―~~―

Maggie is seven. She's metal and grease, wrenches and screwdrivers and so much more. She's also Margaret who is sweet demure smiles and lovely dresses, ribbons in her immaculately styled hair. It's dark brown, like her eyes. Mother laments that she did not inherit her blond hair and pale blue eyes, but relents that Maggie is pretty enough.

Pretty enough for what, is the question, but Maggie is smart. She knows the answer.

It's a man's world, but she is going to rule it someday, she's going to be the queen and they will _bow_ before her brilliance and nobody will _ever_ make her do anything again. She will wear dresses because she _wants_ to, she will wear green and purple and red and gold which Mom says she shouldn't because those colours makes her look pasty, and she will have boots and jeans and grease on her fingers and nobody will get to say a thing about it for fear that _she_ will ignore _them_.

She builds her first engine. Father inspects it and of course finds something to criticise, it could be _better_ here, this thing makes it _inefficient_ , and on and on he goes. But he's _looking_ and he's _there_. Later that evening he leads her to his own workshop and she has to sit quiet and still in the corner while watching him work and listening to him speak about Captain America, who was amazing and brilliant but didn't start out that way, who kept working hard and never gave up. "You were born gifted," Father says. "But hard work and perseverance like he showed is worth a thousand times your genius. Let his example inspire you to strive for…"

On and on he goes. _Captain America is great. Maggie just got lucky with her brain._

The only inspiring thing she finds is the way Father's hands move as they work and the wondrous things she sees in his workshop. Some she can't even identify, and that is _wonderful_. She wants to _know_.

She's good at lying, her mother taught her well, even when truth just has a way of dripping from her lips without control. So she can lie and tell herself that his dismissive, condescending words don't hurt her somewhere deep within.

She's metal parts and grease, and words can't hurt her.

―~~―~~―

There are other people in her life besides her parents and the nanny that has been a fixture in her life since it was decided that Maggie has to be a _good girl_.

Then there's Obie, Father's long-time business partner, a family friend. He's warm and kind and he listens to her, and when he speaks he doesn't talk down. Maggie feels grown-up and _heard_ when she talks to him.

There's Mr. Jarvis the butler, who is what she imagines a parent ought to be like, who makes sure she doesn't forget time in her workshop, that she eats and goes to bed. He's funny and teaches her how to throw a punch on her sixth birthday and gives her boxing lessons from then on. He always has a kind word for her, he never forgets her birthdays, he doesn't mind answering Maggie's endless questions. Some days he takes her with him when he goes into the city to shop, and downtown New York is a different _world_ from the places she's seen before. Mr. Jarvis is her favourite person in the world by _far_.

And then there's Aunt Peggy, Margaret Carter whom Maggie was named after. Her godmother. Aunt Peggy rarely visits, is even busier than Father, but the quality of the visits is well worth the lack of quantity. Aunt Peggy wears lipstick the colour of blood and can insult people without them realising it. The heels she wears look unbreakable, and she walks like a soldier in them. Jarvis taught Maggie to throw a punch and the rules of boxing, but Peggy teaches her about fighting. Not the fighting itself, but the strategy of it. To use everything she can as a weapon, which parts of the enemy's body she needs to target, how to recognise that she's being followed, those kinds of things. How to hold a conversation with a man and _demand_ respect with her very presence.

They are people who don't mind her rambling or care how she's dressed. That's balm to her soul.

It's also them who save Maggie the terrifying first time she gets kidnapped. Aunt Peggy comes in guns blazing, the sun at her back, and the kidnappers panic so hard they don't notice Mr. Jarvis sneaking up behind them and freeing Maggie from the zip ties binding her wrists and ankles together.

It's not the last time Maggie is kidnapped, but it is the last time she's unprepared and helpless for it.

―~~―~~―

Maggie is eight and sent off to school. She got to skip elementary school and middle school, and thank God for that, but Mother puts her foot down and insists on her attending a posh all-girl boarding school the that daughters of her fellow high society wives attend.

Maggie doesn't protest too much. She's insanely curious what other girls are like. The ones she'd met at parties were, like her, only there as accessories to their parents and not meant to say much, just to look pretty and smile a lot. This is going to be different. They'll be _living_ together.

But unfortunately, Maggie quickly grows to dislike school. The girls are just so _silly_. They are nice, for the most part, but they giggle and they coo over her, treat her like a child because she's several years younger. Their preferred topics to talk about are schoolwork, clothes and boys, and all of those bore Maggie to death. At first she's happy when some girls make closer friends with her, but she knows what's up when they start asking about Maggie's family.

At least there's a workshop for her here, specifically built with Stark money for Maggie's use, and that's where she begins to spend all her time between lessons (torturously slow and _boring_ , so painfully inane it _hurts_ ) and curfew. She's the first one up in the morning and the last one to be in bed. Every day, a teacher has to knock on her workshop's door to make her stop working.

There is one good thing though - Mother isn't here. No-one really cares if Maggie wears her hair in a messy bun and has grease-stains on her face. Well, okay, they do care and comment, but most of them don't mean it like Mother does. They don't want to press her into perfect-society-wife shape, they just want to help her look nice. 'Girls need to stick together,' some of them say, and help her clean up her hands and face, make sure her clothes get washed.

It's nice, sort of. But staying at school is still torture. Everything is so _slow_. No one really _listens_ to her. They are silly and shallow, and lessons are torture, she learns _nothing_ and it's just a waste of time and sitting still when she _needs_ to be doing something is slowly killing her. But when she disturbs lessons or breaks rules, the teachers lock her out of the workshop and call her parents.

(She goes into her workshop anyway. Locks aren't a hindrance to Maggie, and security cameras are so very easily hacked.)

Four years of this she has to endure, the full high school experience. When she graduates, she's twelve.

―~~―~~―

At age thirteen, Maggie places second in a robot competition with contestants far older than herself.

She's not proud. Neither is she disappointed.

She's _furious_.

Hacking into the database is child's play. Pulling the files on the winner is even easier. _He_ is thirty-three, good-looking, goes to a fancy university in Washington DC. His winning entry is a robot dog that can bark and imitate dog behaviour.

 _Hers_ was a fully functional robotic arm that responds to vocal commands, with a camera and image-recognition system. It's light and flexible and attached to a harness because she developed the system for helping disabled people. Mother runs a charity for war veterans and the sight of men with missing limbs made Maggie sad. She wouldn't know what to do if she lacked a hand.

Her entry is a million times better than a _dog_ , it's useful, the programming is ingenious, it's even _affordable_. The winner's is a _toy_ that'll never sell because it's way too damn expensive. It's a doll that moves and plays recorded dog-sounds at different intervals.

Her robot arm even has _learning_ capacities, though limited ones. Point at an object and tell it what it's called, and it will _remember_. It can help cook, it can draw pictures (though only ugly ones), it can type on a computer if it's told what to write.

The robot dog can roll over on command.

She should have _won_ , and the reason she didn't is because she is a _she_ and _he_ is not. Because it's a man's world and they are scared that she's better than them. They are _right_ to be scared, Maggie's mind is terrifying and sometimes it scares even her how fast she's going.

But it's not _fair_. She should've _won_.

Father is disappointed, of course, if she enters herself into a competition without asking his permission then she damn well should have placed first. Should have worked harder, he tells her with a barely hidden sneer. Mother on the other hand is pleased, "Second place is perfectly appropriate, dear." Can't have her stepping on men's feet, after all, a woman's place is behind a man or under him.

Maggie is not going to take this. She should have won and she will make them see.

There will be a ceremony to give out the awards. The top three contestants have to present their entries, third place first, then second and winner goes last.

Here's the thing, Maggie has a whole lot of charisma, but she's not a great talker. Her mind is too fast, her mouth too slow, she says one sentence and her brain is already five ideas ahead, that's why she rambles so much. Unless she's well-prepared, unless she plans every word she's going to say.

And by God, she's going to be so fucking prepared for this presentation.

The day of the ceremony comes. Speeches (boring), third place's presentation (yawn), then it's her turn. Thirteen year-old Maggie is spite and fury, but she looks like an angel, hair perfectly coiffed, a modest skirt and blouse combo in shimmering anthracite. She smiles sweetly and begins, opening with her motivation and how important it is to support those that gave parts of themselves in service to the country, plays on patriotism. Mother looks pleased, especially when Maggie drops her name and that of her charity.

Then she presents her project, goes from sweet girl to frighteningly competent engineer in an instant. The programming, the hardware, the mechanisms. She only has twenty minutes for this presentation, but she's planned every word in her speech like it was a battle of war.

And she's _good_. Scratch that, she's fucking amazing. Concise, her explanations convey both the sheer complexity of her project (complex for regular mortals anyway) and the ingenuity of her solutions while still making it easy to follow. She'd practised over a dozen times with Mr. Jarvis and other members of the household staff. She's confident, she has a sense of humour, she makes the audience feel smart when she talks. Then she demonstrates her robot arm, asks a member of the audience to come up to try it out, shows off how easily adjustable the harness is.

Her father even looks pleasantly surprised, though a bit baffled because here's the big question: If she did so well, how could she _not_ win? How amazing must the first place winner be?

The applause as she leaves the stage is deafening by the standards of this kind of setting. Maggie returns to her seat in between her parents and people come up to her to shake her hands and congratulate her, she's _so smart for a girl._

There's a heavy air of anticipation hanging over the audience when the first place winner takes the stage. What marvel does he have, to have beaten Margaret Stark? How will he follow her act?

He can't. He knows it, too, judging by how pale he looks. The man keeps it together as he presents his dumbass dog robot. All throughout, Maggie resists the urge to turn her head and survey the crowd. She's hacked the camera and her computer at home is recording it. Later, she will savour the looks of confusion and dawning realisation of the audience. For now, she contents herself with glancing at her parents from the corner of her eyes, the fixed look of interest on her mother's face that doesn't quite hide her displeasure because her daughter's project, dedicated to her charity, was beaten by a _toy_. Maggie's love for her mother is tainted and stained by disappointment and betrayed feelings, but it does exist and she is _grateful_ for that displeasure.

Even more gratifying is the growing outrage on her father's face as he realises just what cost her the win. Oh, he's not going to apologise for laying the blame for her loss on her, probably doesn't register that he might have said something wrong and hurtful, he's _Howard Stark_ after all. But he knows now. That she should have won, that she is brilliant, and that even being a Stark doesn't change that she lacks male genitalia, which means something in this world.

He knows a Stark was wronged here, and if there's anything he cares about besides his futile search for Captain America, it's the family name.

She's the real winner here.

 _Everyone_ knows it, and the jury is red-faced with embarrassment, throwing her looks full of loathing as if this was all _her_ fault.

They attempt to justify themselves by suggesting that her father helped her, while Mr. Winner did everything himself. It's the wrong move. Father is already furious, but suggesting that he'd let anyone take credit for _his_ work?

No way.

Those despicable misogynistic old men will find themselves full of regrets very soon.

All in all, Maggie is satisfied with the outcome of the evening.

―~~―~~―

Maggie is accepted into MIT at age fourteen. Of course she is, she is brilliant.

She's giddy with anticipation. Her mind thirsts for new knowledge, and MIT is sure to satisfy her at least for a while. God, but she wants to take and _take_ everything they have to offer, take it for her own and make it better, make it new, she's going to change the face of technology, she's going to _change the whole damn world_.

Her mother leaves her at the house near campus that's been bought and readied for her use, a disapproving look on her face, and Maggie is _free_. The entire basement has been converted into lab and workshop, and she can't wait to break it in. No more etiquette lectures, no more dinner parties and social functions, no more frilly dresses in pastel colours. No disapproving stares. No mother trying to unmake Maggie and disguise it as love.

She laughs and laughs as she looks over the security system and examines the basement to her satisfaction. _All hers_.

MIT itself is… a mixed bag. Maggie likes it, for the most part. Lectures are still too simple and slow, but they keep her mind on track when it normally skips everywhere it pleases, drawn from physics to languages to programming to robotics in no particular order in a two-minute rhythm. University lectures at least give her a red strand to follow.

Other students are wary of her. First, they laugh and whisper behind her back how she only got in because of Father's money. Then they realise that in her teenage body resides a genius even the professors couldn't hope to match and they are scornful instead, waiting for her to make the slightest mistake. Some see the Stark fortune instead and sidle up to befriend her. Maggie rebuffs all attempts.

She has trouble sleeping. She can't _help_ it. For a mind like hers, a mind that rolls on and on and _on_ , a maelstrom of ideas everlasting, rest and peace are a small price to pay. There's always one more idea that needs to be considered, another fact to be looked up, a new concept she needs to work out, a hypothesis to be proved, a new creation begging to be built. And there's a workshop and lab in the basement just for her and no-one to tell her to go to bed. Maggie can't sleep anyway with all those thoughts in her head, so she might as well do something useful, right? Coffee takes care of the fatigue, and napping whenever she has the time becomes her replacement for sleep. She can't _stop_ , can't stand _still_ , she _has to keep moving forward._

It might not be healthy, but it's the best time of her life. The euphoria of creating and learning is a constant high. She gets to buy her own clothes, wears combat boots along with floral print skirts she found at a dollar store, baggy hoodies cover her upper body. Mother would have verbally eviscerated her for wearing any of these items and Maggie relishes in that fact.

Freedom is a heady thing. Two years pass in a rush. She goes home exactly once and never even sees her parents which is probably for the best, and takes it as an excuse not to come home again since Maria and Howard are never there anyway.

Mother threatens to cut off her money at some point, but she isn't authorised to do so and Father doesn't care enough to bother. Maggie churns out ideas and creations, and some of them he likes enough to have them produced by one of the smaller companies under the bigger wing of Stark Industries. She's a goose that lays golden eggs and she keeps getting better, so he isn't going to limit her.

'She's just a girl!' she'd heard her mother protest her move to MIT once.

'So was Peggy Carter once,' Father had replied with finality. He might not care about Maggie, but he's never treated her as anything less just because of her gender, unlike Mother.

So yeah. Freedom. Maybe too much of it, Maggie is a mess. At fifteen years old she hacks the Pentagon for fun, not that anyone ever notices, and commemorates it by dying her hair electric blue for reasons she can't quite recall.

'Partygirl', the tabloids begin to call her when she's never been to the kind of parties they're referencing in her life. But she's a Stark and the Starks are famous, and Mother and Father had made sure the public knew about her genius. Maggie is used to it, barely registers it anymore, and the articles are background noise.

The articles get her a strongly worded letter from her mother. Maggie burns it with relish in her lab, adding a few agents that make the flames burn in alternating colours of the rainbow.

Ignoring it doesn't stop the media, and there are many jealous students and even professors at MIT that sell lies to the reporters with relish. Maggie pins the best ones to her fridge and puts red highlights into her still blue hair. She doesn't look like a Stark anymore and she _loves_ it. She builds herself a collection of sunglasses, orders some wigs, expands her wardrobe to contain just about anything, and when she goes out no-one ever recognises her anymore. She can sit in lectures in complete anonymity if she so chooses.

She finds it hilarious when she actually does go to a party in full disguise, drinks herself stupid, and dances with randomly picked men and women like the magazines accuse her of as if they have any right to judge her for her choices, and not a single soul recognises her. Maggie repeats the stunt a few times, but eventually it gets boring. She has things to create and drinking is a waste of brain cells.

Just for fun, Maggie sends photos of those girls on campus that love to sell their lies about her to the media with the note that _Maggie Stark likes disguises_ , and laughs herself sick when the images are printed in articles about her because nobody knows what she looks like anymore.

But she has more important things to do than that, too many ideas to bother with shenanigans like that. There are important experiments to conduct, theses to be written, programs to be coded. She can't _stop_.

Life rolls on. Maggie's sixteenth birthday approaches and Mother orders her home because she's throwing her a birthday party for the Sweet Sixteen. Dress and everything already ready for her, her birthday present is a makeover, all she needs to do is come home for the weekend.

"Sure thing, Mother," Maggie says, phone in one hand, blueprints for her latest project in the other. "Father is still searching the Arctic?"

"He will be back mid-April," Mother answers, which confirms that suspicion. Searching for a dead body is more important than the birthday of his very much alive daughter. "I will send the jet to collect you on Friday."

"Good to know."

Maggie embarks on a road trip the day before her birthday. She's built herself a car in her workshop a while ago, papers are all in order, forging herself a fake license for one of her disguises is easy enough. Once she turns sixteen she can get herself a real one.

She goes off the grid for the week and takes vicious pleasure in imagining Mother having to call off the party which she'd invited _oh so many_ important people to.

"Your father will hear about this!" Mother hisses at her when she actually shows up at Maggie's place to yell at her. "You are out of control, young lady!"

Maggie laughs. "If he can't be assed to show up at my birthday party, then neither can I. Daddy knows best, so obviously it couldn't have been that important."

It ends in a screaming match. Father does send a reprimanding letter a few weeks later once he's no longer incommunicado, and Maggie burns it. No follow-ups, no consequences, he doesn't even care enough to punish her. Life goes on as it has before. MIT begins to get boring, running out of things to teach her, _she_ could be teaching the professors instead. Maggie gives herself one year for winning the MIT Robot Design Award, getting her MIT pirate certificate, and completing a PhD or three, then she'll move on.

A new semester begins. It promises to be a rush of creation and sleep-deprivation like all the others before it. Maggie is knees-deep into building a robot to enter into the robot competition. This one will surpass everything she's ever built before, she just knows it. It's not so much the hardware and construction aspect of it, but the coding and programming. The _AI_. Because this robot, she wants it to have _personality_. Learning capacity. Intelligence.

And maybe, she wants it to have the capacity for feelings.

Maggie can't program actual love, even if it were possible it would be _wrong_ , that's not how love _works_ , but the capacity for affection? That should be doable. She wants to do it.

She's _lonely_.

As for her PhD, she doesn't really know in which field she'll get one, probably robotics since she's already working on that, or maybe she'll go into physics, or both or something different altogether. So many _possibilities,_ so little time.

And there are still lectures to attend, too, and some professors actually do take attendance seriously. Which is how Maggie's semester deviates into the _surreal_ territory because Professor Bletchley assigns _study partners_. "Group E, Stark and Rhodes," he reads out from the sheafs of paper drawn from a box because the decision was made by drawing _lots_ of all things, and Maggie sees some guy elbow his seat neighbour and whisper 'lucky' at him, so she guesses the elbowee to be Rhodes. Rhodes does not look particularly happy as he looks around for her. She gives him a wave because her hair is newly pink with purple strands and pulled into a braid, plus she'd gotten better at contouring, so even her facial structure is barely recognisable and there's no way he'd figure out her identity without the help. He nods at her, looking like he's been struck with a tooth ache.

Great. Well, she'll just pay him off, do all the work - it'd go faster that way anyway - and that'd be that.

"And for the beginning, I want to see what you are all capable of," Bletchley drones on. He's a grumpy old man, but his work is _brilliant_ , which is why Maggie signed up for this class. "So you can each pick one of these boxes, and I expect you to have built something from the contents by next week."

Well, that sounds fun.

Bletchley tells them all to go find their partners and then pick a box. Rhodes ambles up to her, friend again whispering loudly about how lucky he is, 'worked with her before, you can just sleep away the whole semester, and she's easy too, man, if you know what I mean-'

Background noise. It's all background noise, and Maggie's never seen the asshole before. She's also pretty sure she'd remember giving her virginity to some moron.

"You're Stark?" Rhodes stops before her, eyeing her warily.

"Yep," she answers, popping the p at the end of the word.

"What the hell," he says incredulously. "You're a kid?"

"I'm _sixteen_ ," she huffs.

Rhodes looks pissed. "You're not even legal!"

"Sorry to disappoint," she shrugs with a smirk. "Did you have hopes?"

"What the- no! My friend just- he said-" Rhodes sputters. "I'm going to kill him, who messes with kids, what the hell-"

"I've never even seen him," she informs him lazily.

"Oh, that's good, he was just talking shit," Rhodes mutters with some relief, then he's pissed again. "I'm going to kill him for saying things like that!"

"Err…" Maggie says, this is a bit of an unusual situation, Rhodes is so weird. Like one of those things that evolution came up with that just exist to embody the words 'fucking weird'. Like ocean sunfish. Or platypuses. "Go get us a box instead, platypus."

"Platypus," he repeats, blinking owlishly.

"Box," she reminds him, twiddling her fingers.

He turns automatically, going to the front while muttering under his breath.

Dealing with Rhodes does not get any less odd. They agree to meet in her house and he's all "You _live_ like this?" Then, when he comes back the next day, it's "Have you slept at all?!" and overlaid over all of it is a theme of "No, Stark, you're not doing this all by yourself, I don't care how clever and rich you are, we're doing this together and I'm gonna understand every single one of your crazy ideas so help me god and will you just go get some sleep and eat something other than pizza and blueberries, kid!"

 _Weird_.

He's all in her space suddenly, takes over the kitchen which Maggie has only ever used to heat some of her experiments, crashes on the couch, yells at her to clean up after herself and that her home is a goddamn hazard to innocent feet because he stepped on a wayward screw, and also Jesus Christ _go to bed for sleeping don't nap next to the chemicals you disaster of a human being how are you even alive._ Maggie doesn't quite know what to do with him, but she can't deny that he's kind of fun to have around, especially in the workshop. He transforms there, he's not at MIT for nothing and he's full of crazy ideas and has a tendency to wake up in the middle of the night asking things like "What if coffee makers were sentient?" and making suggestions like "Let's build a microwave into a car!"

'Stark' becomes 'Mags' and 'Rhodes' turns into 'Rhodey', and he's all in her space and doesn't leave it even after the semester is over. No, instead he helps her with the heavy lifting for completing DUM-E, as the robot she's been building has been dubbed because the programming is brilliant but the result is altogether not overly intelligent. But it's a _he_ , not an _it_. A tiny person, and Rhodey sobs about being parents when he's finally completed. Honestly, Maggie is no better.

"Hey, buddy," she greets with an enormous smile on her face. DUM-E gives her a wave and knocks a coffee cup onto the floor where it shatters and drenches a random invention which thus dies a sparkling death, and she chokes on a laugh. "Don't worry about that, kiddo, happens all the time, need to clean anyway-"

"Like you ever clean!" Rhodey sobs. "Mags, we have a _kid_!"

DUM-E makes a confused noise, he can do _confusion_ , he's so beautiful, this big black metal arm on wheels. God, Maggie never thought about having kids, but this must be what it's like, right? She loves this robot with all the heart that isn't reserved for science or Rhodey (because Rhodey is her friend now and she's never had one before and she's just so _happy_ ), and maybe there's not enough space for all that love but it turns out hearts can expand to make that kind of space.

DUM-E is her baby and he's perfect and of course he wins the MIT Robot Design Competition.

Maggie's time at MIT ends with her getting four PhDs, top grades in everything, several patented inventions, and a standing invitation to return to hold guest lectures. But most of all, it ends with Rhodey by her side and a robot kid in her lab, and her heart has never been so full.

―~~―~~―

Her parents drop by for a tense and awkward graduation dinner. Well, tense and awkward for her mother. Maggie doesn't care much at all about her opinion anymore and Howard might have been tense if he hadn't been distracted by the blueprints she'd dropped into his hands since he was already here. They're not things she's particularly interested in anymore or has the means to build in her house right now, but she figured he might like a car that runs completely without fuel. It only runs on a battery which recharges as the car drives, as well as on solar energy. If the battery breaks, there's still a back-up energy source. It's clean and quiet and would drive just as fast as any other fuel-run car.

Probably won't be commercially available for a long while though, since the oil firms would probably get pissed if cars suddenly needed no fuel anymore. The economy couldn't take that blow.

Still, it's perfectly all right for private use. The Maggiemobile, as she has dubbed her car, hasn't needed fuel in years, and the Rhodeymobile has joined her in that independence last month.

(It was Rhodey's birthday present. Hey, she didn't spend money on him, just like he asked. Also, there's absolutely no need to stare at his car like it's about to eat him, or for him to lecture her about stealing his car to operate on it.)

"You are coming home, of course," Mother states stiffly. "Now that you are graduated. I think we should celebrate. Your seventeenth birthday isn't far off, either-"

"Actually," Maggie says cheerfully. "I'm going to go travel for a while. See the world. Meet some people, a few universities have invited me to talk about my work in physics and robotics."

Maria Stark's face goes pinched. "Margaret," she sighs. "You are getting too old for this nonsense, you need to grow up-"

"What I'm getting too old for is your attempts to make me into this air-headed society doll," Maggie counters evenly. "As for growing up, I did that somewhere around the time you left me on my own at boarding school. Or maybe when you shoved the inconvenient parts of raising a kid on various nannies. So… no!"

"Margaret Maria Stark," Mother chastises, and _god_ Maggie hates it when her birth name is used on her like it gives Mother some kind of power over her. "Watch your tone! Good lord, where are your manners?"

In the same place where the thirty-five hours of sleep she's lacking this week went. And it's only Tuesday. She started with a deficit.

"I taught you better than this."

"You taught me to act like a giggling moron whose sole purpose it is to serve as decoration for a man," Maggie answers, though she knows it to be an exercise in futility.

"I only want the best for you!" Maria protests.

Maybe she really does believe that. God, Maggie _wants_ her to believe that because it's so much better than knowing that Mother doesn't love the things that make Maggie _Maggie_. Doesn't love Maggie but the doll she wants her to be, which isn't how love works at all.

"You don't think about your future," Mother continues. "You go through life doing your - _things_ \- and you don't think about how things _look_ and how it will affect you later, and all those parties and drinking and the _men_ , my God, do you know what people are saying about you? And-"

Background noise. It's all background noise. Tomorrow Rhodey and her will sit in the Maggiemobile driving across the country while listening to loud music on a nice _long_ road trip. Haha, a road trip with Rhodey. A Rhode-trip.

"Are you even listening to me?"

"About as much as you listen to me." Maggie rolls her eyes. "Do you have anything else to say, aside from how much I don't measure down to your standards?"

"Margaret! Howard, say something!"

Father looks up from the blueprints and Maggie sucks in a sharp breath. There is just something in his eyes that always makes her feel small whenever he bothers to look at her. Some part of her wants his approval when he never even tried to be a part of her life. She hates that, hates feeling small, hates not knowing why she isn't worth his time. "These aren't bad," he says, tapping his finger on the papers. "Where do you want to travel to?"

She swallows dryly. "Road trip around the States, for the first month. Then visiting some places in Europe. After that it's Asia. I haven't really planned a route out yet." She'd change her mind on the way anyway.

"And after you're done travelling?" Howard asks.

Maggie wonders why he bothers. "I have some ideas," she lies. She has absolutely no idea what she's going to do with her life. All her life she's been told she would inherit Stark Industries one day, and that's it. Mother made unsubtle allusions to her running the charities and having children as well after getting a suitable husband.

Neither option appeals, if Maggie is honest.

And neither is _necessary_. The charities have boards and directors and whatnot. So does Stark Industries. Maggie has a trust fund with millions in it. She could do whatever she wanted with her life and never worry about anything, never have anything to do with either career path. And maybe she will. Or maybe she won't. She doesn't know yet. The future isn't set in stone.

"I see," Howard says evenly. "No longer than a year of travelling, Maggie." They both ignore Maria's outraged gasp.

"Sure." Maggie shrugs.

In a year Howard will have forgotten anyway.


	2. Chapter 2

**A/N: New chapter because I'm off to see Infinity War in a minute and it'll break my heart, so be sure to leave me some reviews to cheer me up. ;)**

 **Also for some reason parts of a later chapter made it in here because I'm an idiot, it should be fixed now.**

* * *

 **Chapter 2**

Maggie thought MIT was freedom, but travelling the world for a year and a half gives her a taste of what freedom _really_ is. Not tied to any one place, seeing monuments built by men or nature, experiencing unfamiliar cultures and learning so much, always learning, about science and herself in equal measure.

She'd never thought going hiking in New Zealand with Rhodey could teach her so much. She hadn't touched a wrench for days, hadn't written one piece of code. Just walked on with Rhodey by her side and marvelled at how beautiful the world was even without human interference to improve it. She'd actually managed to sleep regularly for once.

But one year and a half was a long time, especially when Rhodey had to leave for the Air Force after a while. There were phone calls, of course, and Maggie knew solitude, enjoyed it for some part even.

Still, it had come time to return.

She used to dread going home when she was studying at MIT, hated the idea of having to walk up the long way to the entrance of the Stark Mansion. Now Maggie marvels at the fact that that is no longer the case. She's got a backpack full of ideas and really, that's all she needs. Over a year of going to places where the Starks are just _no big deal_ , experiencing countries the languages of which she had not learnt yet, mountain climbing, parachuting, surfing, diving… over a year of challenging herself and the Stark Mansion no longer looks quite so big and imposing.

She strolls in and picks the path that will take her to Howard's office. She knows he's at the mansion right now, had hacked the security cameras a while back to find out. The question is if he's in his office or in his workshop, the latter she will not disturb him in.

Maggie gets lucky. There is light on in his office, though the door is closed. She knocks.

"Maria, I'm busy."

Maggie opens the door. "Too busy for me?"

He looks up from the files on his desk. They look dreadfully boring. "Maggie. You are back."

"Surprise." She shrugs and walks in. "Figured I'd say hi. So yeah. Hi." Sinking down in a nearby chair, she studies him. Had he always looked quite so old? Her memory is about as perfect as it gets and she doesn't recall him having this many wrinkles and his hair being all white.

"Indeed." He studies her in turn. "You look well."

Does she? It might just be a platitude. She hadn't looked into a mirror on the bus ride from the airport. And she hadn't taken the jet either, it was a commercial flight. Well-used hiking boots are still on her feet (they are so _comfortable_ ), jeans are coupled with a rumpled hoodie. Her hair is its original brown, unevenly cut at the shoulders because it was _so warm_ in Spain and she hated the way it clung to her sweaty skin, and there was a decently sharp pair of scissors in her backpack.

"Thanks," she answers. "I got some plans I wanna run by you."

He leans back. "Plans?"

Maggie shrugs. "I've got to do _something_ with my life. So here." She pulls a stack of papers out of her backpack. "This is what I wanna do."

Howard's eyebrows rise as he reads through the files. "Self-defence items. For women."

"To start with. There's a shortage," Maggie answers with a scowl. "It annoys me."

The files contain drafts for a large variety of tasers, stun guns, pepper sprays, and personal alarms. All disguised as items such as lipsticks, compact mirrors, hair brushes, and key chains. Designs for tactical pens, hats that could double as blunt weapons, disguised brass knuckles. Hair-ties that would send out numbing electric impulses to defend against hair-grabbing. Heeled shoes that could shift into a non-heeled form that allowed for fast running. Button cameras for recording up to a half-hour at a time.

"Interesting," Howard murmurs.

"It'll be my own line of products," Maggie elaborates. "Produced by my own company, but hopefully under the wing of Stark Industries. If the products sell well, I'll expand to tactical and survival gear, possibly even protective sports equipment."

"Your own company, you say?" Howard raises an eyebrow.

Maggie shrugs. "Why not? Ideally, I'd still want it to be a subsidiary of Stark Industries."

"Indeed," Howard said after a pause. "This might teach you a little responsibility. Very well. I am glad you've decided to grow up."

 _Background noise._

―~~―~~―

MagTech goes into production with remarkable speed - which is to say, it takes a year before anything is sold. Howard has absolutely no intention of being helpful, so Maggie has to do everything herself. And the Stark name only goes so far when one is stuck with a lack of male genitalia. It was surprisingly easy to forget in her eighteen months of travelling, but this is still a men's world.

Even though she's chosen these kinds of products _because_ it is a men's world. Because she was a female travelling alone and it seemed oh-so-easy to drag her into an alley and rape her. It turned out not to be that easy because she's had enough training to raise hell and get away. It was the first time she found herself grateful for her kidnapping experiences when she was young - it gave her practice and taught her not to panic.

Later the men who assaulted her accused her of coming onto them, that she obviously wanted it, look how she was drinking in the club, look how she was dressed, who can fault them for getting the wrong idea? Attempted rape, _obviously_ not the case, this was all _her_ fault.

Money talks louder, though, and Maggie had a lot of money on hand. She also got access to a computer. The matter was kept quiet, the men ended up utterly _ruined_ and behind bars.

And Maggie found a motivation for producing self-defence gear for women. Because she'd _really_ have liked to be able to do something besides punching, kicking, screaming and running afterwards, and then treated like some whore at the police station.

The first stores selling her products open just shy of Christmas Eve in 1989. The products are positively received, though the stores aren't an instant overwhelming success. She catches a lot of flak for selling products for women, then there are voices complaining that what she's selling is completely _unnecessary_ , this is a safe country, if a woman calls for help or just dresses appropriately she'll be fine and so on and so forth. The good old Maggie-Stark-the-Party-Girl articles resurface, too. And who knows what she was up to in her year abroad. Look, a photo of her in Paris! Obviously incriminating evidence.

(She was just visiting Uncle Jacques, damn it!)

 _Background noise_. Maggie is defiance and conviction, and the products get more popular in time, positive reviews are made by nearly all female reporters, customer reviews are stellar. There are women who proclaim to owe their _lives_ to Maggie's tech. She opens more stores all over the country, her products soon available by mail order as well. There is something satisfying and gratifying about seeing women walk around wearing the heels she designed, the stun-gun rings, the electroshock hair ties. Maggie opens two new product lines, one for home security and another for personal armour.

Personal armour turns out to be a goldmine. Reviews and tests declare her products to surpass everything currently commercially available, and the orders come pouring in.

Interviews, meetings, staff expansion, contracts… Maggie's life is suddenly very busy. She sees a lot of her father these days, but it's all business meetings and god, does she learn to hate those, especially if she's facing him and Obie in them. Father is brilliant and ruthless, daughter or not. He's also not above using his status as her father against her, which means he gets to say whatever he wants and she has to swallow it and try to politely twist his words to her advantage. One does not piss off the CEO of Stark Industries, _especially_ not as a young woman just entering the world of business.

But Maggie is Maggie, and she deals with it head-on. She's brilliant, a prodigy, and her genius stretches to the business side of things. Even if her success is largely attributed to Howard, either as an inherited quality or, less kind, as him helping her behind the scenes. It's still success and she'll show them all. One day, she'll be the one they scramble to please.

Sleep is hard to come by those days, business cuts into her time for inventing which obviously means she has to sacrifice sleep.

It's fine. Not as fun as MIT was, but she's doing something meaningful with her life. She's helping protect American citizens. It's worth it.

Protective gear is just the beginning, though. She is only warming up.

―~~―~~―

Maggie wonders how she was dragged into this.

A Christmas trip. A Christmas trip with her _parents_. Dammit. She could have been celebrating with Rhodey, but _no_ , Mother just had to go and announce to the press that they were all going to be spending time together as a family over Christmas.

These days Maggie can barely stand to be in the same room with Maria Stark, not since the 'find a husband' talks started in earnest. _You're twenty-one, Margaret! You need to think about your future while you still can._

In other words, while she's still pretty and wrinkle-free because otherwise no one's ever going to want her. Jesus Christ, this wasn't the Dark Ages and Maggie would certainly never be living in poverty no matter what her marital status was.

At this point, Maggie is seriously considering acquiring herself a harem just to piss of her mother. She'd traded in the V on her world travelling trip and sex is fun enough, but not enough to sign everything she's built for herself over to a man for his hand in marriage.

So now here she is, sitting in the back of the car while Howard drives with Maria next to him. She's fiddling with wires, leather, and tweezers. Sadly, she miscalculated when she thought she could keep herself busy by building a prototype taser glove for the whole car ride. She's just about done already and there are still three hours of the trip to go. The only thing left to do is to figure out how to limit the voltage output, as it is the glove will lead to rather crispy victims. Then there's the challenge of making it look less like a really mean weapon and instead more like a piece of clothing.

It's a question of materials, she reasons. This _is_ just a prototype, and give her a break, she's making this thing in a moving car with no-

Something hits the car. Brakes screech-

" _Howard!_ " Maria screams-

 _Impact_. Maggie's body is thrown forward into the back of the driver's seat before her. Everything goes black, or rather, very fuzzy and painful and the seatbelt feels like it's cutting into her shoulder. There is noise, a car door opening, a body hitting the ground outside. Her mother's quiet whimpers of ' _Howard, Howard, Howard.'_ Steps.

"Please… help my wife… my daughter… help," Father's voice slurs. Then, "Sergeant Barnes?"

The sound of a hit. A choked noise of pain. More hits. Mother's whimpers and cries as she sees it happening. Maggie tries to move, to wiggle out of the tangled seatbelt. Every bit of movement hurts. Her head is pounding, everything's spinning, it's probably a concussion. Goddammit. There should be a gun somewhere under the seat. Maggie can't reach it because her arm is weird and cracked and hurts _bad_.

Steps again, "No, no, no," Mother chokes out in terror. "Howard!"

Maggie sees it as if from a distance. The door ripped open. A metal hand finding Mother's throat and the noises cutting off. The killer's face is terrifying. Utterly cold and completely determined. Except determination implies motivation, and that's not what this is. He's empty. Just driven, with empty intensity behind those pale eyes.

Mother's movements stop. Not the slightest twitch anymore. A few more long moments, and the killer lets go of her. Then he looks at Maggie who is tangled, trapped, terrified. Mother is _dead_. Father is _dead_. This isn't _real_.

The killer retreats. She hears his steps crunching on glass shards. The boot lid is opened, sounds of rummaging follow - he's looking for something - god she's going to _die_ \- he slams the boot lid shut again. The door next to her opens, and strangely warm metal grabs her by the neck. She feels the power in those fingers, all he needs to do is _squeeze_ and that'd be the end of her.

But he doesn't. Instead he yanks her out of the car and tosses her on the asphalt. She screams both in terror and in pain. She's going to die, die, _die_ and his hand is reaching for her again, he has her by the throat, pressed against the car, she can't _breathe_ -

And in those moments, the world slows down, her mind becomes _clear_. She sees everything with astounding clarity. The confused, erratic thoughts that normally populate her brain shift and focus only on the _here and now_. As if the threat to her life forces order onto her normally so chaotic mind.

She realises several things. One, he's going to kill her and it'll look like she died in the accident, like she crawled out and then succumbed to her injuries outside the car. Two, he's underestimating her just like every-fucking-body else in her stupid life because he went to rummage around the boot lid instead of neutralising her first. Three, she's going to lose consciousness within the next seven seconds, lack of oxygen plus concussion will do that. Four, she still has the taser glove prototype in her hand.

She doesn't plan. Doesn't strategise or think it through. If she did, he'd probably read the intention from her eyes.

He doesn't so much as flinch when her hand unbearably slowly reaches out as if to slap weakly at his face.

He could have stopped her, she will realise later. He could have stopped her, but he didn't.

And the taser glove, the output of which she had not figured out how to regulate yet, hits the exposed skin of his face. It doesn't kill him, surprisingly, but he seizes up and goes down like a stone, and Maggie manages to somehow pry his hand from her throat and scramble away. She stumbles over something on the ground and falls.

The something was her dead father's legs. Maggie closes her eyes and counts to five, tries to catch her breath and alleviate the spinning in her head, then her fingers roam over his motionless (deaddead _dead_ ) body and find the gun she knows he carries. Her fingers tremble something awful, the gun is heavy in her fingers as she clicks the safety off and levels it at the murderer. Assassin. Is he an assassin? He looks like one.

She fires. Two precise shots into his legs because if he gets moving again she's dead. Dead like her parents. Oh god. A hysterical laugh escapes her. Her parents are dead, this isn't happening, this isn't _real_ , except it is and her head hurts badly and her arm is definitely broken.

The assassin is still conscious and his fingers are already twitching when his muscles should have been out of commission for a little while longer. Maggie comes to a decision after only a moment ( _moment's decision_ has a different meaning when it comes to her, her mind is _fast_ ), gets up, and decisively strides over. Another shock with her glove and he's limp again. Then she slams the handle of the gun against the side of his head.

The crack echoes in the sudden silence, only her heavy shuddering breaths sounding. She sinks to her knees and buries her face in her non-injured hand. Then she closes her eyes and takes a deep breath. And another and another before she gets up and looks around for more threats. There's a bike there which has to be what the killer arrived on. And a pole, mounted on which is a traffic camera.

 _Anyone could be watching_.

She sinks back down behind the cover the totalled car provides. There's… there's supposed to be- it's hard forming a clear thought. Her head _hurts_.

Deep breath. Plan. Come on, Maggie.

She closes her eyes and takes another deep breath. Okay. Maggie swallows harshly and walks up to her father. His body. He's dead. Head beaten in, eyes open wide.

From his jacket she pulls the mobile phone that has yet to hit the market but was supposed to do so sometime in the next two years. When she was younger she'd been given phone numbers to memorise just in case she ever needed help with, say, a kidnapping. She dials those numbers now. The first try doesn't go through, the number doesn't exist anymore. The next one is answered by a harried voice in Spanish, a kid yelling in the background, definitely the wrong number. But the third… "Howard?" the voice on the other end asks.

"Aunt Peggy?" Maggie answers, voice too thin. She's cold. It's the middle of the night and her jacket is in the car. She doesn't want to go near the car.

"Maggie, is that you?" Aunt Peggy's voice isn't something Maggie remembers very well, it's been a few years. But her way of speaking, how clearly she enunciates words, how professional and _competent_ she sounds, the way her heels click like little stabs on stone tiles, those things stuck in her mind. "What's wrong?"

"There's been-" Maggie tries and can't get the words out. Deep breaths. "There's- Father is-"

"Maggie, I need you to calm down. I'm going to ask you a few questions. Answer with yes or no." Aunt Peggy sounds much more alert now. Maggie can hear her walking quickly, wherever she is. "Is this an emergency?"

"Yes," Maggie forces out. "Howard and Maria are dead."

She hears Aunt Peggy stutter just a little in her steps, but that is the only sign of the news affecting her. Her voice betrays nothing. "Are you injured?"

"Yes. Concussion and broken arm." Maggie closes her eyes. "The car is totalled. That guy made Father drive into a tree and then-" She chokes on the words. "I need you to come get me," she says instead.

"Maggie. Are you being forced to make this call?" Aunt Peggy asks. "If yes, say something about the car's damage."

"I'm not under duress," Maggie answers. "I electrocuted the killer."

"Good girl. We're on our way to you. Stay on the phone."

"Do you know where we- where _I_ am?" Maggie asks.

"Howard's car has a tracker in it. Just in case." Aunt Peggy pauses. "What can you tell me about the killer?"

"Rode a bike. Metal arm. Really strong." Maggie shudders. "There's- Father hit his head pretty bad, I think, so he might have been seeing things, but- he called him Sergeant Barnes."

"Impossible," Aunt Peggy whispers. Maggie hears other voices in the background now, someone yelling orders.

There's a long pause. Then, "I'm climbing on the helicopter now. I won't be able to talk to you for a little. We'll be there in twelve minutes max."

"Okay," Maggie answers numbly. The call ends.

She puts the phone away and for a moment just sits there, in between her father's dead body and the assassin's unconscious one. A part of her wants to laugh or cry or just… make _noise_. It's so silent here. Her brain is scrambled and confused, but that doesn't mean it's any less active.

Maggie replays the incident in her mind. The car going out of control. The steps, her father's begging, the sound of his hits, her mother's pleading. The boot lid opening-

 _He took something from the trunk._

Her eyes widen and without thinking about it, she shuffles over to the assassin's body, mindful to stay out of the camera's view. The man is still out cold. The fingers of Maggie's good hand flutter over him, finding guns and knives, a grenade - and a small black case with the Stark logo on it. It's locked, of course.

She _needs_ to know what's in there. Right now. She has to know what her father was killed for.

Maggie Stark is an excellent lock-pick.

Inside of the case are five small cylindrical glass containers filled with a clear liquid. They are not labelled, there's no indication as to what they contain. Maggie stares at them blankly.

She has around eight minutes left until Aunt Peggy gets here. Less until she's visible from the helicopter Peggy will be arriving with, apparently, and what the hell is Aunt Peggy doing with her life, that she can respond so quickly and competently to a crisis like this and casually mobilise a goddamn helicopter? She's _seventy_. And what the hell was _Howard_ doing that he got himself murdered in the middle of the road by some- some _cyborg_ -

Seven minutes pass until the noise of rotor blades breaks through the silence. By that time, the case is locked again and back in the assassin's bag.

The glass containers within are now filled with coffee from Maggie's thermos.

―~~―~~―

Aunt Peggy has gotten old. For some reason, that's the first thing Maggie notes about her. Her hair is lined with silver, wrinkles and age spots betray her age. But she has aged gracefully, her beauty timeless, and clearly she's fit for her age, judging by the nimble and practised way she climbs out of the helicopter. There are others with her, all clearly knowing what they are doing, and all armed to the teeth.

Maggie has by now brought some distance between herself and the car, her father's gun still firmly in her good hand. She'd relieved the killer of his weapons, but she won't delude herself into thinking that she got them all. And if he wakes up and throws a grenade, it would all be over.

She hasn't made it obvious that she'd been hiding out of the camera's view range, had taken care to look disoriented, as if she'd only been sitting and freaking out after calling Aunt Peggy. Thrown in a semi-faked crying fit over her father's body while she carefully transferred the mystery liquid into test tubes she'd had with her, stoppered them, and hid them in the hidden bottom compartment of her purse.

Not the easiest thing to do with a broken arm, and she risked making whatever it was useless or contaminated by letting it come it into contact with air, but that was a risk Maggie was willing to take.

Now here she stands, gun in one hand, and watches her godmother hurry up to her. It's like something out of a movie.

It should feel more distant than this. It shouldn't feel like it was really happening. In books and movies it was always like that. Some event right out of a nightmare, denial of reality, that sort of thing.

She isn't that lucky. It is all very real, and her mind is already processing the events. The _deaths_.

Sometimes, a mind like hers is more curse than blessing.

Aunt Peggy hurries to her side while her… minions? Subordinates? Colleagues? Crowd around the car. Some of them swear when they see the killer. "Thought he was a _myth_ ," someone utters.

"Maggie," her godmother says. "Put the gun down."

Oh. Right. That would be a good idea. Maggie lowers her arm and clicks the safety on.

"Hello," she greets. "Long time no see."

"Indeed," Peggy says quietly. "I wish the circumstances weren't quite so terrible."

That makes two of them.

"What's all this?" Maggie finally asks, indicating the crowd of armed people securing the site and restraining the killer. Definitely _not_ official law enforcement, and the weapons are not standard military either, and _definitely_ not anything sold currently on the market, though the designs are very obviously Howard Stark's.

"Can you tell me what happened here first?" Peggy requests cautiously, gently steering her to the helicopter. There's a black man with the most badass coat Maggie's ever seen standing there, looking leader-ish and barking orders. "You don't have to force yourself."

Maggie Stark is just a young woman who went through a terrible experience after all. She might be traumatised. She's never experienced any sort of violence first-hand, aside from the less comfortable kidnappings, but _never_ anything of this level. Of course Aunt Peggy would be gentle in her approach.

Right now this suits Maggie just fine. There are five test tubes hidden in her purse that she doesn't need to be discovered. The best course of action is to not act suspiciously and make these almost-definitely super spy people search her belongings. "I'll try," she answers uncertainly. "We were going on holiday. As a family. I was sitting in the back and…" she swallows dryly. "Working on a project. Taser glove. Next thing I know Mother is screaming and the car smashes into… a tree, I think, but something hit the car before that, it must've been _him_ … the brakes weren't working and-" Maggie falls silent, replaying for the hundredth time what had happened. "Then he- Father fell out of the car, or at least I think, I heard steps and then he was begging for- for-"

Maggie leans into the hug Peggy offers her, and lets the older woman pry the gun from her suddenly limp and cold fingers. "Maggie. I'm here. You're safe."

"They're dead," she whispers. "I don't- we were going to spend Christmas together. For the first time in… five years."

"Shh. You're safe," Peggy repeats softly, rubbing her back. "Can you tell me what happened next?"

"He- k-killed them," Maggie forces out. "Then went around the car and l-looked for something in the back, I heard him searching. Then he came for me. D-dragged me out of the car. And I still had my taser glove. After that I found Father's gun and shot his legs. The- assassin's I mean, he's an assassin, isn't he? He looks assassin-y."

"It's likely, yes," Peggy answers. "Do you know what he was looking for and if he found it?"

Maggie shakes her head. "I don't know. I think so, he didn't look for very long before he went after me."

Peggy nods. "I'm sorry you had to go through that, sweetheart."

"What's going _on_?" Maggie questions desperately. "Why would Father be- and who are all these people, how did you get here so fast-"

"Shh," Peggy soothes. "I promise I will explain everything. Later, when you've been seen by the doctors and rested a little. But you are safe. I promise that you are safe with me."

―~~―~~―

Maggie wakes up in a room unfamiliar to her. It's utilitarian, clearly meant for guests, and provides little to no comfort. Her personal belongings had been collected for her, placed next to the narrow bed she spent the night in.

She resists the urge to check on the test tubes in her purse. It's almost certain that she is under surveillance. This _had_ to be a spy agency of some sort. The Strategic Homeland Intervention, Enforcement and Logistics Division, better known as SHIELD, Peggy had told her the previous night. And apparently, she was a founding member along with Maggie's father.

It seemed like a goddamn joke. Yet Maggie had already seen the traces of her father's influence all over the place in the brief glimpse before she fell into bed. The body armour the operatives wore, the weapons, the helicopter. The layout of the base. The insignia proudly displayed at the entrance of the base, of which a simplified and stylised version was displayed in the dining room of Stark Manor.

 _This_ was probably the real reason for all those missed birthdays and general dismissal of her presence in his life. Had Mother even known? Unlikely. This was the exact kind of thing she'd never have shut up about. Maria was big on family honour.

God.

Mother was killed.

 _Father_ was killed.

She forces deep breaths into her lungs. Somehow it doesn't feel as if the oxygen arrives in her body.

Just… two people she had known and loved despite all difficulties and disappointments, _gone._ Within moments, two lives were erased. That was _terrifying_.

Despite mostly raising herself, despite rarely relying on parental support, it leaves her feeling off-kilter, small and lonely.

But there is nothing she can do besides taking care of her own self. Figure out just what was really going on, analyse the contents of the test tubes, then deal with the matter of Stark Industries. God, she needs Rhodey, but he's in some training camp right now with barely any contact to the outside world.

So she gets out of bed, takes a shower, changes her clothes, and leaves the room.

"Stark." The voice verges on the brink of pissed-off. It belongs to the man that had barked orders yesterday, the one with the cool coat. He looks to be in his thirties and, corresponding with his tone, looks pissed. "Follow."

"You have me at a disadvantage," Maggie answers evenly as she falls in step with him, not showing how much the curt order irks her. "Who am I talking to?"

"Deputy Director Fury," he grunts, not sparing her a look. Rude asshole.

"A pleasure, I'm sure," she says blandly. "Where are we going?"

In response, he opens a door with just a little too much force. Behind it is a cosy little room with breakfast spread out, a friendly-looking man talking quietly to Aunt Peggy. They both stand up when Fury and Maggie enter the room. "Miss Stark," the man greets immediately, holding out a hand. "Director Alexander Pierce. May I express my sincere condolences for your loss. Howard was a great man and Maria was simply a lovely woman."

The moment he praises her parents to her face, her mind does what it always does, and spits out, _I had to fight for every scrap of attention my father spared me and Mother taught me the meaning of existential terror at age four when she threatened to take away my access to science._

Out loud she says, "Thank you, Director Pierce."

"If there is anything we can do for you, Miss Stark, anything at all, please do not hesitate to mention it." He gives her a sad smile. She doesn't trust it. He runs a spy agency, it would be the stupidest thing ever, and Maggie is far from stupid.

"That means a lot, Sir," she answers. "At the moment, I would appreciate answers."

"Of course, my dear. Please, have a seat." He gestures to the wooden chairs, pulls one out for her. "You must be hungry, please help yourself to the food. Nick, Peggy, you too. You've been awake all night."

Peggy smiles wryly and takes a piece of toast. "Only if you join us, Alexander. You've been busy as well."

"Ah, the burden of responsibility," Pierce sighs wryly, and sits only after Maggie sinks down in the provided chair. Aunt Peggy and Fury sit as well, though Fury looks like he'd rather wrestle a rhinoceros than be here.

The whole scene feels like a theatre set-up. Domestic, meant to set her at ease. The cute little room, the breakfast, the small-talk - all of it only achieves the opposite.

"But please-" Pierce says. "We are not here to talk about work. Miss Stark, please ask your questions. It's the least we can do to answer, though I must warn you - some information may be classified."

Maggie had spent the walk to this room compiling a list of questions she needs answers to. She's also put together a list of questions she really _shouldn't_ ask. There is quite a bit of overlap. But a few safe questions are left.

"What, exactly, is SHIELD?" she asks.

The answer she gets is winded, full of propaganda, and impressively vague. The Strategic Homeland Intervention, Enforcement and Logistics Division - and that convoluted name was definitely made to match the acronym - is a counter-terrorism intelligence agency serving to protect the country from threats that humanity was not quite ready to face or even be aware of. It was all about Protection with a capital P, apparently.

They talk a lot but don't actually say much at all. But there's also information in what they _aren't_ saying.

"Next question," she says. "Why was my father killed?"

"We were hoping you could tell us, Miss Stark," Pierce says quietly.

Maggie thinks of the test tubes in her purse, sitting innocuously on the floor next to her. "Me?" she asks cautiously. "I don't- I have no idea."

"Nothing at all? Think hard, Maggie," Aunt Peggy encourages her gently. "Anything could be important. Did he act oddly lately? Stressed, maybe? Spend more time than usual out of the house?"

"I don't know," Maggie answers, shaking her head. "He's always out, has so many meetings, and I'm always busy, too, so I wouldn't have noticed." She buries her face in her hands to escape the prying looks. "I should have noticed, shouldn't I? If I had-"

"Now, now, my dear." Pierce pats her shoulder. "None of this is your fault. And worrying about could-have-beens helps no one."

"There's-" she speaks up. "I was surprised when he agreed to the Christmas trip. It's- he's normally too busy to spend time with family. He was happy about something. Satisfied."

"That's something, isn't it?" Pierce gives her an encouraging smile.

She should tell them. Maggie removed evidence from the crime scene, and the SHIELD thing seems to go much further than originally assumed. And she's _not_ equipped to deal with this. Aunt Peggy is, and she obviously trusts these people. Peggy is her _godmother_.

This isn't Maggie's world. She builds things and runs a business. She doesn't want _this._

But Maggie doesn't know or trust _this_ Aunt Peggy, the one that sits with the head of a spy agency, the one that knew full well that the Howard who was part of this. She hasn't been a part of Maggie's life for years and she's a different person to the Aunt Peggy Maggie used to ramble ideas to and who taught her how to shoot a gun.

"There's - weren't there any clues? That man, the - the assassin, he was looking for something," Maggie asks desperately.

"No," Aunt Peggy answers. "There was nothing."

No mention of a black case filled with glass containers on the assassin's body. A case with the Stark logo on it, so obviously connected to the murder. Not a _goddamn_ word about that.

They are _lying_ to her. Her own godmother is _lying_ to her face about her parents' murders and the attempted murder of Maggie herself.

She remains quiet about the test tubes.

"Do you know what your father was working on? He mentioned a big project to me," Peggy enquires. "It might be important."

"No," Maggie answers. "He always guards information about his projects jealously."

Peggy sighs, looking tired. "He did," she agrees. "If you remember anything-"

"I'll tell you," Maggie lies to her face like she had done to her, and nobody notices a thing. "What's going to happen next?"

Peggy straightens. "It's up to you. In the interest of the investigation, we believe it's best if Howard and Maria's deaths are labelled as accidents."

"You want me to lie?"

"Feign memory loss. You did hit your head pretty hard."

"I can do that," Maggie agrees. Honestly, the thought of talking to people about the _murder_ of her parents makes her want to vomit. Better to claim not to remember. Better to chalk it up to an _accident_.

"Good," Peggy says. "Currently, all the public knows is that Howard and Maria are dead, and you are believed to be resting in a private hospital. The police has labelled the incident as a car accident, but they will certainly want to talk to you."

"Okay," Maggie murmurs. "Thanks for the warning."

"Miss Stark," Pierce speaks up. "You do not have to go back. If you wish, SHIELD can arrange for a new identity in order to protect you. You may be targeted again by whoever ordered Howard's death in the first place. Finish the job, if you will forgive me the blunt choice of words."

"You want to fake my death," Maggie surmises, tone of voice neutral.

And make her work for them, neither of them says out loud.

"Howard was a dear friend. He'd want us to keep you safe," Pierce says gently. "By any means necessary. He loved you very much, always talked about you."

Liar.

Father didn't _care_.

"Thank you for the offer," Maggie says haltingly, stifling the angry words that want to tumble out of her mouth. "But I have a duty to his legacy, Stark Industries. I can't leave that behind."

Pierce sighs. "We'll arrange for alternate means of protection, then."

"Thank you." Maggie swallows dryly. "What about - the killer."

Uneasy looks are exchanged between Peggy and Pierce. Fury still looks pissed that he has to be part of this conversation at all.

"Father called him Sergeant Barnes," Maggie continues. "But the only Sergeant Barnes he's ever mentioned before died a long time ago. Was it a relative? Did he - did someone send him? Or did he have - a grudge or something- or did Father just imagine things-"

"It was him," Peggy answers, and Maggie doesn't miss the disapproving frowns of the men in the room. "It _is_ James Buchanan Barnes. There is absolutely no doubt about it."

"That is classified information," Fury speaks up for the first time in this farce of a conversation.

"She has a right to know!" Peggy snaps at him. "Maggie, he's been brainwashed. He doesn't remember who he is. Please don't - please don't hold it against him."

Maggie stares at her incredulously. "He _killed_ my parents!" she hisses. "That's - and Barnes died half a century ago! That guy, he's too _young_ and- he killed my parents!" She's almost shouting by the end.

"It's not his fault!" Peggy yells, standing abruptly. Then she falls back into her chair. "It's not his fault," she repeats tiredly. "There is - his description fits an assassin called the Winter Soldier, who has been active for the past forty to fifty years. He was believed to be a myth. Given Bucky's physical appearance and from what our doctors can tell, he's been experimented on and kept in cryogenic stasis for extended amounts of time. We don't yet know just what they did to his _mind_ , but I will personally see to it that he's _fixed_. Maggie, this wasn't his fault."

Maggie just stares at her, impotent rage swirling in her stomach. She called him _Bucky_. Like an old _friend_. "At the current level of technology, cryogenic stasis is impossible. Fifty years ago it was even less so. The human body can't survive it."

"He's been experimented on," Peggy repeats. "First during the war, by HYDRA. Then someone must have found him after he fell and continued the experiments. He is _not_ a regular human being."

Something clicks in Maggie's head.

Aunt Peggy isn't seeing just 'Bucky' here. Captain America crashed his plane in the Arctic. If Barnes survived cryogenic stasis, then Steve Rogers could still be alive in the arctic ice as well.

Fucking Captain America, once again stealing Maggie's parental support away from her. It's obvious that no matter what she says, Peggy won't listen to her.

This conversation was a waste of time.

―~~―~~―


	3. Chapter 3

Returning to the Stark Mansion carries no relief or sense of safety with it. Doubtlessly SHIELD will have combed through the house already in search of information on whatever Howard Stark worked on before his death and to get their hands on whatever tech was in there. And to get rid of incriminating info on SHIELD, if it exists at all. They probably desecrated her workshop while they were at it,

Plus, they very likely bugged the house, too. In the name of _protection._

"Listen, Maggie," Obie says next to her as the limousine drives up to the house. He'd been waiting for her outside the hospital room SHIELD had smuggled her into, and had soon after bundled her up and put her into the car.

She very nearly threw up at the thought of having to sit in a car after the… _accident_. But she managed to keep it together. Stark men are made of iron, Father used to say. Maggie is no man, but she can manage the iron thing no problem.

"Yeah?" she asks her godfather.

"You don't have to do anything. I'll take care of everything. You just rest, all right?" He squeezes her shoulder. She bites back a wince.

She's bruised all over. One arm is in a cast which means her work speed will be _slow_.

"Thanks, Obie," she answers. "You don't have to, though. I need to do _something_ , I'll go crazy if I don't."

"You Starks," he says exasperatedly, shaking his head. "Listen to the doctor's orders, Maggie. Rest. Actually, I'll talk to Jarvis and the mansion staff, we both know you're not going to listen anyway."

"Ha," she laughs weakly. "Well-played. Okay, I'll stay away from the workshop."

Don't expect her to be inactive, though. She can operate a computer just fine.

"Good girl," Obie says.

 _Not by a long shot_.

―~~―~~―

The first board meeting of Stark Industries comes far too quickly for Maggie's liking. Her parents' wills had been read only the previous day, the funeral - a huge production filled with far too many people and speeches - was two days before that.

As expected, Maggie inherited almost the entire Stark fortune and company, with just a few instructions to give money to charity.

But her inheriting the _company_ is just on paper. Major shareholder she might be now, but the board of directors decides on the CEO. They'd no doubt suggest Obadiah take over instead of her. He's already interim CEO.

To be honest, Maggie isn't particularly interested in being CEO - MagTech is already enough work - but it _is_ her birthright, her inheritance, her legacy, and she would absolutely not see it in anyone else's hands, even her godfather's.

 _So_.

She's going to have to convince the all-male and on-average thrice her age board members that she's the best person to be the head of Stark Industries, in all her twenty-one year old female glory. _Fun_.

Maggie walks into the meeting room two hours early, in part because she has preparations to make, and partly because she is paranoid that they gave her the wrong meeting time to make her look stupid for arriving late. Good call, it turns out, because the old bastards start arriving an hour later and look fairly displeased to see her there, sitting at the head of the table in her father's chair, her currently black hair braided into a coronet atop her head, her subtle but devastating make-up carefully applied. Her black skirt suit is modest in theory, but it's tailored to mould along every slender curve, and paired with her black heels her legs seem to go on for miles even though she's not actually that tall.

She greets every single man that comes in by name sweetly, lets them stare at her legs and curves while she asks how their wives are doing, they'd gotten along _so well_ at the last charity event. Accepts their condolences for the loss of her parents graciously and lets them paw at her hand and squeeze her shoulder, "If you need anything, just ask," and "Howard would have wanted me to look out for you" falling from their lips, of course they'll be here for her in such a trying time, perhaps she would like to come over for dinner sometime. Two of them mention how their sons are her age. Another is oh-so-coincidentally going through a divorce as of last week and invites her over for dinner.

 _Disgusting_.

Obadiah comes in last, strolling in as if he owns the place. Clearly aware of the true meeting time and not having told her a fucking thing about it.

Maggie expected better of him, but business always comes first for Obie. She'd learnt that in the past year of heading her own business, so she isn't particularly surprised. In any case, his confident steps falter upon seeing her, but then he shakes his head fondly, an exasperated smile taking over his features. He knows that she caught him, but he won't apologise for it - business is business. But for the same reason, he can't be angry at _her_. She's doing the same thing he is.

The clock chimes one and the meeting begins. Obie takes control of it naturally, he's usually the one who dominates the talks. And like her father used to, Maggie sits back, staying quiet and listening attentively. Most of it is concern over stocks falling and what course shall be taken. They tiptoe around the CEO subject, probably because Howard Stark's oh-so-fragile grieving daughter is sitting right there.

"With Howard gone, it's not certain stocks will rise again-"

"Oh, but they will," Maggie finally deigns to speak. From her pocket she pulls a remote control and points it at the metal contraption in the corner that nobody has questioned the presence of so far. It hums to life, lights illuminating, blue rays shining above it, and then the hologram of a 3D blueprint appears. Shocked exclamations ensue from half the board, awed silence from the other. Hologram technology had always been the stuff of science-fiction, until now.

To be fair, the hologram projector was the result of a Star Wars binge with Rhodey during their time at MIT. She was on her twenty-second hour of no sleep and he on his eighteenth, both hyped up on caffeine and sugar. They'd barely come out of the workshop for weeks, and they might have acted various scenes, with Rhodey in the role of Princess Leia, Maggie as Chewbacca, and DUM-E playing both Luke Skywalker and R2D2 with great enthusiasm. The memory makes her want to smile, but in this setting she can't.

"As you can see, the hologram shows the blueprint of a submarine. In speed, stealth, and radar technology it far surpasses everything else currently traversing the seas. The weapon systems are easily customisable, the engines are efficient enough to go around the world on one tankful of fuel." She presses the forward button and a new blueprint appears. The men watch as if hypnotised. It doesn't even matter what she's showing them, all their minds are just going _oh, shiny hologram._ "A surveillance drone I designed last year. Again, outfitted with stealth technology and completely silent. Next, we have a few military aircrafts and the weapons to go with them. Missile defence system. Radio-communication device. Sniper rifles, various models." On and on Maggie lists the devices she invented over the course of her life and pretends as if the hologram projector is perfectly normal and not revolutionary at all.

It totally is though, and they better be fucking aware of that.

"And that's just the military stuff," she finishes eventually. "So, as you can see, provided we come to an acceptable agreement Stark Industries' stocks are going to be rising rapidly very soon indeed."

"Acceptable agreement?" Generic board member number seven asks. Maggie is pretty sure that this is the one who has a gambling problem. Hawthorn, Basil.

She smirks and leans back. "Oh, come now. Unless you've already decided on a CEO behind my back - which would end very unfortunately for everyone involved with the exception of myself - we all know what the real point of this meeting is."

"Maggie, my dear," Obie speaks up, frowning. "You… want to be CEO of Stark Industries?"

She snaps her fingers. "Bingo."

Uneasy looks traded between sexist assholes. Obie (sexist asshole only when it benefits him) takes charge. "Maggie, you're already responsible for MagTech."

"Which will continue as it always has, as a subsidiary of Stark Industries." Maggie smiles her most charming smile at him.

"I assumed you wanted to go into research, though. You're a scientist first, that's what you always said. Being the CEO of the company will cut heavily into your time in the workshop, and look at all you've accomplished already," Obie points out. He does have a point. But again, Stark Industries is _hers_. And as if she could _ever_ be content with what she has. She _always_ needs more, needs to _create_ , needs to _progress._ One day she's going to rattle the stars and even that won't be enough.

"Keyword 'assumed'," Maggie replies. "Father managed, did he not? So will I."

"You are not your father, Miss Stark," Blakely, the guy who's trying to trade his trophy wife for Maggie, speaks up patronisingly.

"I'm not," she agrees. ""My interests are _far_ wider spread than his. My genius is wasted on being limited to military technology, which is why under my leadership, Stark Industries will be expanding into medical technology, biometric systems, communications, entertainment and recreation among other fields. Gentlemen, I am going to _take over the world_."

Silence follows that grand statement. Maggie smiles triumphantly.

"And we all know that I don't particularly need Stark Industries to do it. It would accelerate the process, certainly, but ultimately…" She shrugs. "I have the seed capital a hundred times over, I have the skills to do it… give it a little time and I'll do it without the backing of Stark Industries."

Her father had raised Stark Industries from the ground up, in a less than optimal economy, with barely any money to his name and only his brain to back it up.

Maggie would do so much better than him.

"Your choice, gentlemen. Either elect a Stark to head Stark Industries, the way it was meant to be… or go and see how far the stocks really will fall when the company has no Stark at all. I'd sell my shares right now while they're still worth something."

―~~―~~―

Maggie's throat is hoarse by the time she walks out of SI's Main Office, Obie on her right the way he used to be at Father's.

"You did well, Maggie," he says.

"Of course I did. I had excellent examples to learn from," she answers evenly.

Examples were all she got. No-one ever deigned to _teach_ her to lead a company, she had to figure it all out herself. Then again, she's Maggie Stark, so she did brilliantly. Teachers would have just slowed the process down.

"I want you to know that you can always ask me for advice," Obie tells her seriously. "You're my goddaughter and now, my business partner. I have your back, no matter what, and any experience you lack I can provide."

"That means a lot," Maggie murmurs, halfway sincere. "Thank you."

Obie at her back will make so many things _so much_ easier.

"You surprised my today. All those inventions… was the hologram projector your work, too, or from Howard's pile of jealously guarded treasures, never to be shared with the world?"

Maggie grins. "That baby's all mine. It's still got a few bugs though. But I figured I could make a few jaws drop with it anyway."

"You certainly did." He clasps her shoulder. "I'm proud of you. Howie would be, too."

That… is not a statement she wants to think too much about, the murders and the pain still too raw. What little sleep she'd gotten since was plagued by nightmares.

"Thank you. Hey…" She fidgets, looks at the ground.

"What is it, Maggie?"

"It's just, I know he was working on something important before his death." She looks up. "Do you know anything about that?"

"So you noticed it, too?" Obie sighs deeply. "He skipped meetings and claimed to be busy in the days before the accident. I assumed he was just trying to get his work done so he'd have more time for the family holiday."

"But you don't know what it was?"

He chuckles sadly. "This is _Howie_ we're talking about."

"Haha," she laughs weakly. "True enough. I guess I just want to… I don't know."

"Connect with him?" Obie asks.

"Something like that." She stifles a scowl and shoves the thought of those test tubes deep down.

"It's getting late, do you need a ride home? Can't drive with one arm in a brace," he offers.

Maggie shakes her head. "I've got a ride, but thanks. See you tomorrow."

"Of course." He grins and adds, "Boss."

"I could get used to that," she answers with a grin of her own and watches as he walks away before she makes her way to the parking lot. The black car that waits for her doesn't look special at all, but she knows for a fact that it's bulletproof and runs on electricity the way she designed it. She gets a kick out of the fact that SHIELD uses cars she drew the blueprints for.

Maggie plops down in the front passenger seat. "Board members are all bugged. Have fun eavesdropping on the sleazebags talk about how to best manipulate me."

"No difficulties?"

She gives Fury a look. "They were too busy staring at my legs and pawing at my hand to notice me slipping bugs into their clothes. Ugh, I feel dirty."

He starts the car without answering.

"I still heavily doubt they know anything," Maggie mutters. "Fucking sexist assholes. One of them invited me to dinner in the same breath that he mentioned his recent divorce. While touching my _hand_." She waves her hand for emphasis. "That'll be the first one to be quietly removed from the board."

"If there is a chance that they have information, it needs to be investigated," Fury answers, eyes on the road. "No matter how _you_ feel about it, Stark. The consequences of Howard Stark's death are far worse than you think."

"Yes, well, it's not like anyone's telling me shit, so how would I know?" She rolls her eyes.

"Do your job until your security clearance is high enough. Until then, the information is classified."

Asshole. She's going to hack SHIELD and get the information her own way. Speaking of, "There were some projects on Father's office computer that I'm assuming were meant for SHIELD. Buried under a fuckton of boring shit. Encrypted to the nines. Well, not anymore." Out of her bag she pulls a hard disk.

Fury takes it. "Our agents already went through his data."

"Obviously they didn't do their job right." She crosses her arms. "If they had found it, they'd have removed it. It all but _screams_ spy gear."

"I assume you removed the information from the systems."

"Of course," she snorts. "No idea what he was thinking, saving the data on his office computer. Probably just stashing it there for later because he had an idea while sitting at his desk, then something more important came up and he forgot. Happens to all of us."

Fury nods curtly.

"So we're going to another super secret SHIELD facility. Where is it? Is it underground? Is it like the last one? No, we're in the middle of NYC, of course it's not. It's probably some office building that nobody would ever suspect. With at least twelve basement levels. Am I right? I'm definitely right."

"Do you ever shut up, Stark?"

"Do you ever not sound pissed? Or look pissed? _Are_ you ever not pissed?" Maggie eyes him. "What do you do for _fun_?"

"Shutting immature brats up."

"How am I _immature_?" she asks indignantly. "I'm totally mature!"

"'I am going to take over the world,'" he quotes her sarcastically.

"I figured if I was dramatic enough they'd forget I don't have a dick," she explains reasonably. "I'm so not world-domination material. I can't even keep a cactus alive. I'd probably manage to kill a pet rock."

"That I can see," he comments dryly.

"See? I know my limits. Super mature."

He pulls into a parking lot. "Follow," he orders and gets out of the car. Maggie takes a deep breath, bracing herself. Conversation over, no more distraction. Okay.

"Following's not my style," she mutters as she climbs out of the car and follows him.

Fury leads her into a shiny office building - totally called it - purposefully striding past welcoming desks to an elevator. He doesn't touch the buttons for the different floors, instead opens a hidden panel which reveals a hand-print scanner (nice!) and number pad. He angles himself so she can't see what he does. The elevator sets itself in motion.

Maggie doesn't say a word, not even when the doors open again to what is definitely an underground level - again, called it - and Fury leads her down a corridor. More super secret codes entered into super secret number pads, super secret heavy steel doors slide open, and then-

The lab has 'Howard Stark' written all over it. It even smells like him, or maybe that's just in her head. Maggie shudders.

More than anything it feels like a mausoleum, the memory, the _essence_ of a dead man preserved here. Machines, instruments, blueprints. A family picture on the wall, all of them smiling stiffly, and Maggie really doesn't know what to think of her face in Father's workspace, his _sanctuary._

She should not be here.

She doesn't _want_ to be here, but Pierce wants to _know_ what Father was working on and how far he got, and it turns out that SHIELD's scientists couldn't make heads nor tail of most of his work. Maggie is the next best option. If she can't give them what they want, they'll try someone else.

The faint suspicion that Pierce knows what Howard's project was - because in the past days she's heard so much about how much he did for SHIELD that she's pretty sure that the organisation is more his child than she was, it stands to reason that if he shared the big secret with anyone it'd be a member, which also might mean that his death was ordered by someone _in_ SHIELD, but she's not thinking about that, _can't_ let anything show on her face - is carefully hidden. Maggie is fully aware that she's way in over her head, trying to bullshit people that sniff out lies and plots professionally.

So she's not going to bullshit them. She'll continue telling them she doesn't know anything about Howard's work - it's the truth. And she's going to bury any suspicions, any thought about the test tubes, even the faintest trace of dishonesty, deep down in her mind, and not touch them for the next three years. New inventions, business expansion, research - that's what she will focus on.

And when enough time has passed, when she's learned how SHIELD operates, once they don't ask her questions anymore, once she knows enough of their surveillance tech to fool it - only then will she begin figuring out just what her father died for.

"So have you got any hints as to what I'm looking for?" she asks Fury, shoving the dread and sense of wrongness invading this place leaves her with down and instead pulling up that bit of anticipation and giddiness that comes with being let loose in her father's secret workshop - she'd rarely been allowed to _touch_ anything in his official one, if she was invited inside at all. The excited smile comes easily, and it grows at Fury's barely hidden look of disgust. "Like, blueprints for a superweapon or some kind of virus or computer program?"

"Start working."

"Mm," Maggie hums. "Do you ever smile? I heard that people who smile are less likely to go bald. You have very nice hair, it'd be a shame to lose it."

"Stark, is this a joke to you?"

"The world's my playground. Are you going to stand there and watch the whole time while I do my thing?" she asks in return.

"As a civilian, you shouldn't even _be_ here, Stark," Fury growls.

She didn't _ask_ to be here. It was just assumed that she'd be. Learning of SHIELD apparently meant being a part of it. They'd wanted to make her sign fancy NDAs and work contracts, too, but she refused to do so without legal counsel. And by legal counsel she meant lawyers _not_ on SHIELD's payroll. As a compromise, she's now a consultant.

Peggy had been understanding, Pierce had pretended to be, and Fury was just plain pissed off. His problem, not hers. Who's she going to tell about SHIELD anyway? There's no benefit in revealing them.

She can't deny though that pissing Fury off is a thrilling pastime.

"Suit yourself," she shrugs. "I'll look at the computers first."

SHIELD would have stripped the room of anything they already understood or deemed too dangerous for her to see. But as she'd seen earlier today, they were not perfect and Howard was too smart for them. Maggie has hopes. Not high ones because she can't believe that Howard would do his secret project in a _spy agency_ of all places, and if he did then why would he have the fruits of his work with him in the car that day of the accident? It wouldn't make any sense.

The ill-fated Christmas vacation was supposed to be spent in a villa suspiciously close to the SHIELD facility Peggy had been at that night, it stood to reason that Howard was transporting the vials to SHIELD under the guise of a family vacation.

But hey, if they want her sniffing through his things, his brilliant inventions, then who is she to argue?

Maggie gets to work, sitting herself in front of the row of computers. Some of them are old enough that she suspects them to be keepsakes from the forties. Which is probably the point of putting information on them - barely anyone knew how to work those things anymore.

Well, she isn't a genius for nothing.

The only times she pauses her work is when she needs a coffee or the bathroom. She doesn't talk to Fury at all, instead chattering at the machines, "Come on buddy, you know you wanna talk to me," and "Sweetie, we'll have you fixed up in no time, won't hurt, I promise."

When Fury next does speak, what he says is: "It's four in the goddamn morning, Stark."

"Mm," she hums, typing with one hand faster than most people ever manage with both. Father kept all his data in some obscure filing system that she only began to understand three hours ago, and of course everything is encrypted. Which isn't much of a hindrance to _her_ , but she can see why the SHIELD hackers gave up. "You can go if you're tired."

"Stark. _You_ are tired," Fury replies. "Go home and sleep."

"I'm not sleepy."

"You have yawned twice in the past ten minutes."

Maggie shrugs. "Still not sleepy. Just a little tired." Hm, that's one interesting file. Now she knows what kind of mics the mansion is probably bugged with. Should be a piece of cake to get some jamming tech running. For the cameras she's going to have to think of something else, though.

"Stark." Fury's entire voice is _judgement_.

"Yes, Deputy Director Fury?" she asks pleasantly.

"We're going."

"Just a minute longer," she waves him off.

" _Stark._ "

"Yes, yes." She rolls her eyes, shutting down the computer. Her spine cracks when she gets up and stretches. Rhodey hates it when she does that. Fury doesn't even twitch, but she hopes he shares Rhodey's opinion.

The walk back to the car is silent and so is the car ride. Maggie's mind is still reeling from the information she found. Howard built and did things she never considered. The Stark Industries Weapons are one thing, but the work he did for SHIELD? In some cases, unethical at _best_. Maggie is fully aware that her moral code is not without flaw, but she _does_ have one, whereas Howard unapologetically contributed to the nuclear bomb which says a lot about his, or rather, the lack thereof.

SHIELD _steals_ technology and research. Howard has papers on his computer that were never published, papers that could do so much good in the world of science. Written by scientists that Maggie has mostly never heard of, but some she _did_ and she _knows_ that they'd never have given Howard the fruits of their labours willingly.

The thought of herself being exploited in such a way makes her want to punch someone's face in.

"Stark, wake up."

"I'm not sleeping," Maggie answers. "Oh, we're here. Great. Thanks for the ride. See ya tomorrow."

―~~―~~―

The next few days pass in more or less the same manner. Endless meetings with the board of Stark Industries, casually dangling her more flashy inventions in front of them like carrots. After that, car rides with Fury and going through her father's stuff until he decides it's bedtime for her. Ha, as if. The moment she's back at her childhood home, she's back in the workshop she set up there.

It's more of a temporary thing. The thought of staying in the house of her childhood is stifling. She wants to go somewhere sunny. The elegant New York mansion is cold and empty, her steps there _echo_ when she walks the halls. The staff does their best, but it's not a _home_ , not the way her house near the MIT was. There are memories everywhere, but they are rarely happy ones. Any moment, she expects her mother's clacking heels to approach, followed by exasperated comments to be a little more Margaret and a little less Maggie.

Having the staff around is nice, though. Mr. Jarvis is the _best_. She _missed_ having the man who taught her boxing and tucked her in at night after telling her stories around.

But he's getting on in years and should be with his family instead of taking care of a giant mansion and garden that his dead friends owned and only Maggie lives in now - and she's gone most of the day and night.

No, Maggie wants to move somewhere warm and sunny. Live in a house by the sea far away from SHIELD's headquarters, a house that she herself will build. Somewhere that's only _hers_. With a gigantic workshop and lab, of course. As soon as she can, she's going to look for properties that suit her needs - and do it discretely. Tipping off SHIELD before it's done would mean that they'd somehow get their hands on her building plans, probably infiltrate the construction workers and put listening devices in the walls the way they did in the mansion, and just generally poke their noses where Maggie doesn't want them.

Thanks but no thanks.

If they claim that it's for her protection, she'll introduce them to the world's most advanced security system. It's still in the crazy idea stage, but she's got some time still. She has a three-year plan for getting the hell out of NYC, in order to begin working on the mystery liquid her father died for after that without anyone knowing.

She'll have to be careful. Make it look like the whims of a spoiled girl. Demand the Stark Industries Headquarters move with her, expect everybody to cater to her demands. Generally act like everything the media has so far accused her of being.

Might be fun, actually. No reason she _shouldn't_ enjoy it, so long as she didn't get careless.

The doorbell rings on the fifth day after her gaining the title of CEO. It's early, six in the morning, but Maggie is awake already, or rather, awake still. She's running on coffee, determination, and spite. Which SHIELD would know, they had installed cameras even in her workshop despite acquiescing to her requests not to and not told her about it - needless to say, she's taken to writing her notes down triple-encoded and working on three projects at once to make her work harder to follow.

It was probably a SHIELD agent at the door.

This turns out to be a false assumption.

" _Rhodey_ ," she breathes, and throws herself into her best and only friend's arms.

"Hey," he answers, hand soothing on her hair. His voice is rough with exhaustion. "I came as soon as I could, Mags. I'm so sorry."

She buries her face in his neck. Neither of them acknowledge the fact that her eyes are leaking tears.

―~~―~~―

The first thing Rhodey does is to throw himself with her in his arms onto a couch and fall asleep. No escape possible, even if she wanted to, but she doesn't.

Rhodey means safety and unconditional support, and she hasn't had any of that since her parents' deaths. Plus, she _likes_ Rhodey-hugs.

She falls asleep after a while. When she wakes up it's because her inner clock reminded her that she has shit to do. Rhodey is still so deeply asleep that he only grunts when she extricates herself from his now looser grip, writes him a note, and leaves the house.

More board meetings. They've stopped being careful and feeling her out now - now they just want her to dance to their whims and drain her dry of her brilliance until she's an empty husk. _Do this, do that, you're a girl, let the men take care of the heavy lifting, you're young, I hope we can have a closer relationship, there is so much I could teach you._ _Who do you think you are, foolish female, how dare you be better than us, just spread your legs and whore out your brain._ She feels dirty every time she walks out of the door at the end of it. Meeting with the research teams goes far better. She's right at home in the labs, these people speak her language - not quite as well, but that's fine, they're teachable and they respect her. In R&D she's the queen.

Less great are the meetings with Stark Industries' lawyers, but that was a given. Legal jargon is not her thing, laws and guidelines bore her to tears. But it's a part of her life now, she signed up for this, so she listens, nods, fact-checks and cross-references until she's satisfied, no matter how tedious the work is.

On and on the meetings go. There's always one more person to meet, one more hand to shake, one more smile to paste onto her face. And when it's over, Fury is waiting for her to take her to Howard Stark's lab so she can be useful to SHIELD. Honestly, why they make the deputy director babysit her instead of someone less important, Maggie has no idea.

It's better today, when she has actually slept and charged up on Rhodey cuddles. Rhodey's waiting for her at home and that makes everything so much more meaningful. Plus she gets to shock Fury by announcing she's ready to go home at only eleven pm.

When she gets home, Rhodey is wearing an apron with heart prints and cooking pasta with Mr. Jarvis, and for the first time in so many days everything is all right.

―~~―~~―

"Let's take a walk. I wanna see the stars, platypus," Maggie announces during the middle of the movie. It's a sappy love story because Rhodey loves those. Maggie is more about sci-fi and explosions. They give her _ideas_.

Which is probably why they stress Rhodey so much, come to think of it.

"Okay," he agrees, giving her an odd look but rolling with it. They amble along the gardens in amicable silence.

"Mother loved gardening," Maggie says into the silence. "You'd think for all her society lady obsessions she'd hate getting her hands dirty, but she loved it. She tried to teach me but I never had the patience."

"Hm," Rhodey hums. "D'you wanna try?"

"Nah," Maggie waves him off. "It just came into my mind."

She pulls him along further.

"This was her favourite thing about the whole garden, though," she says, pointing at the intricate fountain. The water forms oddly hypnotic patterns, the soft yellow light illuminating them beautifully. "Father built it for her. He made it so it can run all year long, regardless of temperature. The water is heated in winter, see the steam coming from it?"

"It looks like mist is rising up," Rhodey comments, looking at her oddly. Maggie is not a small-talk person. She's also not particularly sentimental about anything concerning her parents.

But this isn't small-talk.

"It's a little loud for my liking, though, what with all the water noise," she adds casually, hand drifting into her pocket and pressing the button on her jamming signal device. "Come sit with me, Rhodey-bear." She gives him a significant look.

They sit on the edge of the fountain, Rhodey laying an arm around her and she cuddling close. It's a cold night after all, and she shoves her nose into the space where his shoulder and neck meet, long hair obscuring her face. "Place is wired," she admits. "Sorry 'bout the secrecy, Honey-bunch."

He stiffens. Shifts her around until she's sitting in his lap, and buries his face in her hair. The people monitoring the cameras won't be able to read their lips this way. "What the hell did you get yourself into this time, Mags?"

"It wasn't a car accident," she answers quietly.

Rhodey breathes a curse. "You-"

"I saw it. I got lucky, hitting _that man_ with a taser." Maggie shudders. She'd looked death in the face that night. Faced her own mortality and all that. Not pleasant.

"Shit," Rhodey whispers, clutching her tighter. " _Shit._ Mags, baby-girl, how are you really doing?"

"Hanging in there." The words are the most honest she's been in what feels like forever. "And it turns out Father was working for a super-secret spy organisation which is why I've got almost zero privacy at the moment. I'm working on it."

Rhodey swears again. "What can I do?"

"Right now, nothing," Maggie admits bluntly. "I might ask you for stuff in the future. Might need a middle-man at some point."

"I hate not being able to help."

"The hugs help a lot." She cuddles closer to him. "I'm glad you're here, platypus."


End file.
